Where have I been living? Obviously nowhere on this earth because I wake to find that Sean Penn is one of the best actors I've seen in recent years and I mean this sincerely. Oh disagree if you want, but I'm serious and likely you all know this and I'm again the odd man, or odd woman, out. This fact struck me after seeing his performance in both Mystic River and in 21 Grams.

His performance in Mystic River, based on the Dennis Lehane novel and taking place in a town in which I've lived, was enough to convince me of Penn's acting chops, and I recently saw the film 21 grams and was amazed at how Penn has matured a an actor, how he has grown into himself and away from the paparazzi punching Madonna's boyfriend bad-boy that I remember him as. Sure, he's played a few roles here and there or maybe I missed some of the larger ones, but I have to say, his performance in Mystic River was absolutely convincing and having lived in the midst of this neighborhood, it struck me as utterly authentic.

What impresses me the most perhaps is the difference between that performance and Penn's performance in 21 Grams, in which he plays a heart transplant patient who receives the heart of Naomi Watt's awfully killed husband (and two daughters) who are accidentally run over by Benecio Del Torro (an accident for which he does not stop, though later will attempt to make right) and who are left to die on the road "like a dog" she says. Somehow, Penn finds out whose heart he has and seeks a relationship with the widow. Never mind that he is already has a wife who has stood by him through all of this health issues. The desire to know, the desire to try to help in some way overrides any desire to stay with his wife who wants desperately to be artificially inseminated by him, an idea she is obsessed with despite his protestations of no, he nonetheless fill his little cup with his sperm, signs the release and so what is his recourse? None. She can have his sperm and maybe even his child, but it seems she cannot have him.

That Naomi Watts should be devastated is hardly surprising. To lose her entire family in this way would take away almost anyone's will to live, at least for a while. And that she turns to drugs - cocaine and other illegal substances, is also not surprising. It's just a way of self-medicating, of taking away her emotional pain that runs so deep. Penn arrives as a friend, and at first, does not reveal that he has her dead husband's heart - a fact she will find out in time and will be understandably hysterical about - a scene that Watts plays extremely well, for the record. Her anger, her hysteria, her hurt, the words and the way she says them are utterly believable as is Penn's reaction.